Cold Blooded Lover

by Eliza Lentzski

  The rubber soles of my boots were nearly silent as I traveled the hallways of the Fourth Precinct. I hadn’t been above the basement level since my Field Training Officer had recommended I be taken off active duty. My former supervisor, Inspector Garnett, had taken my gun, but not my badge. I had my gun again now that I was back to active duty, but it stayed in a locked gun box in a side drawer of my office desk.

  On a typical day I had no reason to be on the main level, but more than that, I avoided this place for fear of bumping into someone I knew. My closest friends knew why I’d taken the position with the cold case division, but I had no way of knowing what the others believed. Police departments might have been largely populated with men, but experience told me that gossip was not gender-specific. Running into F.T.O. Mendez was at the top of my list of things I didn’t want to happen. I harbored no real resentment for the man anymore, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be friendly with him or even see him. Let him torture some other rookie, not me.

  The role call room was expectedly empty. Everyone would be out on patrol, and it was too early for second-shift officers to be trickling in. Officer names were written on a whiteboard and information about wanted fugitives were tacked on a bulletin board.

  Although I had expected the room to be empty, it was still eerily silent. The room—the true epicenter of the precinct—was a place for boisterous camaraderie. The juvenile pranks and crude jokes were an integral part of the job. Without them, the shelf life of a police officer would be severely diminished. Even though we had an important and serious job to do, the debriefing room was the place where we could let down our guard and just be human, much like at our operating bases when I’d been in the service.

  My nostalgia was interrupted by the sound of a door opening. I whirled around on the heel of my boots.

  Inspector Garnett, whom I hadn’t seen since taking the cold case job, came to an abrupt stop. “Miller, what are you doing in here?”

  I tried not to be offended by his question. My job description had changed, but I was still law enforcement. This room wasn’t off limits.

  “Uh, I was looking for a TV and DVD player. I remembered seeing one in here a while ago. The computers downstairs are too outdated to play DVDs.”

  “Having a little movie marathon?” His tone was indecipherable. I couldn’t tell if he was giving me a hard time or disapproving.

  “No, sir, it’s for a case I’m working on.”

  “I think there’s one in the weapon’s cage.” He pulled a large key ring from the front pocket of his uniform pants. “Let me get it for you.”

  I followed the Inspector as he unlocked the sliding door where on-duty guns, ammunition, and extra bulletproof vests and gun belts were stored.

  “Are they treating you good down there?” he asked.

  “As good as can be expected.”

  “How about Captain Forrester? I hear he’s … well …”

  “He’s been fine, sir.”

  I had no beef with my new commanding officer. Sarah had been right. He stayed out of our way and let us do our jobs. He was an uninspiring leader, but the job didn’t require a cheerleader; that’s what Stanley was for.

  “Ah, here we go,” the Inspector said upon setting eyes on a TV strapped to a metal rolling cart. “Good memory, Miller. I’d nearly forgotten about this thing.”

  Together we maneuvered the television-DVD combo into the common room.

  Inspector Garnett made sure to lock up the weapon room behind us. “I’m glad I ran into you, Miller. I’ve been meaning to check in on you, but … well …” He looked flustered and uncomfortable.

  I let him off the hook. “It’s a lot of stairs, Inspector, I understand.”

  “If you need anything, anything at all, let me know. I may not be your C.O. anymore, but you’ll always have an ally up here.”

  I smiled at that. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

  I rolled the TV to an outdated service elevator and rode it down to the basement. The distinct scent of burned popcorn greeted me upon my exit. My nostrils flared as I walked into our shared office. The charred scent was even stronger there.

  “Did you burn popcorn, Stanley?”

  My co-worker looked alarmed. “I thought it would be nice—uh—that we might like—it’s gonna take a while to get through these.”

  I sighed as my eyes fell on the unlabeled stack of DVD security footage. It had taken me the better part of the day, but I’d eventually identified the bin that contained the security footage. And like the bins themselves, none of the security DVDs had been labeled with dates.

  “Yeah. We’d better get started.”

  Stanley and I spent the remainder of the day poring over hour after hour of grainy, low-definition security footage. It felt like an exercise in futility, but I didn’t want to tell Stanley that. He was too excited that the discs still existed at all.

  While the discs themselves hadn’t been labeled, the raw surveillance contained a helpful time-stamp. In theory, all we had to do was look for the date and approximate hour, which the original investigators had listed in their reports, but none of the DVDs were in any kind of order. What’s more, if we had had more advanced equipment, we could have divided the discs between the two of us and cut our viewing time in half.

  “How many more of these do you want to get to today?” I asked, stifling my yawn.

  Stanley glanced in the direction of the slow-moving office wall clock. “You have some place to be?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  I was due at my therapist, Dr. Susan Warren’s shortly, but I hadn’t yet come up with an excuse to skip out of work early. I could have told Stanley the truth—he didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d gossip—but I’d always believed the less people who knew about my disability, the better.

  I could tell he was waiting for some kind of explanation, but I wasn’t prepared to give him one.

  “Just a couple more,” he vowed. He popped another disc into the DVD player.

  I rubbed at my temples. My eyes were dry from staring at a TV all day. “I’m gonna need more caffeine. You need something?” I offered.

  Stanley continued to stare, unblinking, at the TV. He popped a vending machine Cheetto into his mouth. “No, I’m good.”

  I stood and groaned at the stiffness in my joints. That I.E.D. had done a number on my back, but I had no excuse for the ache in my knees whenever I sat still for too long. My body felt much older than my actual age.

  “We found it,” I heard Stanley gasp. “It’s the day Jane Doe died.”

  Coffee forgotten, Stanley’s words jolted me awake. “Are you serious?”

  Stanley read off the TV screen. “July 28, 2005.”

  I clambered back to the TV set. “Do we have a time of death? Or maybe an intake record from the hospital?”

  “Nothing very specific. A time range at best. We’ll have to fast-forward and hope we can see her.”

  I pushed some buttons on the DVD player.

  “There!” Stanley exclaimed. He pointed a Cheeto dust-covered finger towards the television screen. “Go back a little,” he told me.

  I did as instructed and resumed the video. A two-door coupe pulled through the half-circle drive where ambulances were parked in front of St. Mary’s Hospital.

  I watched a figure exit the passenger side with difficulty. The individual stumbled forward a few steps before collapsing onto the sidewalk. Hospital personnel immediately swarmed the person.

  “She got out of the car under her own power,” Stanley said with increased excitement.

  I paused the footage again. I squinted my eyes at the grainy black and white footage. “How can you tell that’s her?”

  I rewound the security footage and played the scene again. I watched the person tumble to the concrete again while the vehicle that had transported him or her drove away. No one from the hospital seemed to notice the departing car as they were all concerned about the injured woman.

&n
bsp; “Didn’t you tell me someone had dumped her body at the hospital?”

  Stanley hummed the affirmative and flipped through the case folders spread across the worktable. “The original reports said she’d already been dead when hospital staffers found her.”

  “How could they have gotten that detail wrong?” I wondered aloud. “That seems like a pretty important distinction.”

  “And if she checked herself into the hospital, she might have told someone her name,” Stanley added.

  “What about the car?” I rewound the security footage and watched the scene one more time. ”Can you make out the license plate? Or the driver—do they look female or male?”

  Stanley stood beside me, stroking his gnome-like beard. “The video is pretty low-definition, but I may be able to enhance the image. I’ve got a buddy in the medical examiner’s office who’s got some pretty fancy audio-visual equipment.”

  “Damn it,” I cursed.

  “What?”

  I’d lost track of time. I was going to be late for my therapy session with Dr. Warren. As excited as I was about this break, I couldn’t miss my appointment.

  “I have to go,” I announced. “I’m supposed to be somewhere right now. I’ll see you tomorrow, Stanley.” I clapped my partner on the shoulder. “Don’t work too hard.”

  + + +

  Dr. Susan Warren’s offices were located in one of the only true skyscrapers in the Twin Cities. Prior to our sessions, I’d been seeing a psychologist on retainer with the Minneapolis police department. My new therapist specialized in trauma, especially war trauma.

  Dr. Warren was an older woman with fine lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. Her grey hair was streaked with white. The signs of her age comforted me. This was a woman who had experienced life. She had laughed. She had cried. She had known pain and tragedy and the great joys this life had to offer. She wasn’t a snot-nosed newb fresh out of graduate school.

  My therapist crossed one leg over the other and regarded me over the top of a yellow legal pad. “How’s the new job? Has it been working out?”

  I leaned back into the white couch cushions. “It’s a lot of paperwork and sitting behind a desk. But I suppose it’s better than always wondering if the next radio call is going to trigger something.”

  She made a thoughtful sound. “That weighs heavy on your mind--wondering when you’ll be triggered next.”

  “It’s why I originally left MPD and went up north.”

  “I find this interesting,” she remarked. “You stopped being a police officer here, only to become one up north. Did you think a change of environment would help?”

  I stared down at my hands. “I wasn’t really thinking,” I admitted. “A part of me knew I was being reckless. Nothing guaranteed a new assignment in a new city would make a difference. But I was too selfish at the time to give up law enforcement altogether.”

  She made another noise and wrote something down. The note taking was the worst part of these sessions. It made me self-conscious. I wanted to wrestle that pad of paper from her hands and discover what she thought about me. I sat on my hands instead.

  “When’s the last time you were triggered?” she asked.

  I exhaled loudly. “At the beach the other day.”

  “Ahh, so you went through with that.”

  “Didn’t Julia give you a full report back?” I couldn’t help the jab.

  Dr. Warren frowned and placed her legal pad on her lap. “I’m sorry, Cassidy. Talking to your partner was terribly unprofessional and borderline unethical. I’ll understand if you’d feel more comfortable with a new therapist. I could probably recommend some to you.”

  I hadn’t expected her to disassemble like that. “Let’s not break up over a little infidelity, Doc,” I said. “I know all too well how Julia can make a person do things they normally wouldn’t.”

  Dr. Warren cleared her throat and resumed taking notes. “So tell me about the beach,” she said, getting us back on track.

  “It wasn’t too bad—not compared to my previous flashbacks, at least. I had this moment where I wasn’t sure what was real and what was only in my head, but it was really quick. I think I was more expecting the worse than anything actually happening. Like it’s been going so well …” I trailed off, not sure of myself.

  “And you don’t believe that can last,” she observed.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You know there’s no cure, Cassidy. The best we can hope for is these long lapses between episodes.”

  My mood instantly soured. Thanks for the pep talk, Doc, I wanted to say. I settled for: “I know.”

  “I can call the folks who run the Virtual Iraq facility at the VA hospital if you’d like.”

  “That’s like a video game or something that simulates war?” I questioned.

  “Mmhm,” she confirmed. “There’s quite a long waitlist, but maybe in a few months we’ll be able to try that out. In the meantime, keep writing in your dream journal and keep challenging yourself to try the things that you’ve been avoiding. I’m not asking you to purposefully trigger yourself,” she noted. “But it’s always healthy to push your boundaries a little.”

  + + +

  After my session, I found myself driving to St. Paul instead of my apartment. Julia and I didn’t have plans that night, but the last thing I wanted after therapy was to be alone.

  “Julia?”

  I kicked off my boots and stalked deeper into the condo. I’d spotted her Mercedes in her parking spot, but the front of the apartment was dark and silent.

  “Julia?” I tried again.

  “In here!” I heard her voice filter from the back of her apartment.

  I followed the sound of her voice and that of quiet music that seemed to be coming from first her bedroom, and then from the master bathroom.

  Like the rest of her apartment, Julia’s bathroom was high-end. Heated tiled floors. Double sinks in the vanity. An intricate river rock pattern in the shower with a rainfall showerhead. The centerpiece was the massive soaking tub, where my girlfriend currently resided.

  She held a worn paperback book in one hand. A glass of red wine was on the floor, but not out of reach. The overhead lights had been dimmed while tea light candles illuminated her features. A headband kept her dark hair out of her face.

  I leaned on the doorjamb and admired the view. “Well, this looks cozy.”

  She looked unalarmed at my appearance. My girlfriend had a particular talent for not letting emotions reach her features. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight. Didn’t you have a therapy session?”

  “Doesn’t Dr. Warren have you on speed dial?” I quipped.

  “I’m really sorry, Cassidy,” she frowned. “I promise I won’t do that again.”

  I pushed myself off the doorframe and stood in the center of the threshold. “She actually offered to quit being my therapist because of that.”

  Julia hummed. “That’s very noble of her. And professionally probably the right thing to do.”

  My eyebrows knit together. I had considered it an annoyance that my therapist and my girlfriend had spoken about me, but nothing more. But the way they were both reacting, it made me wonder if I should be worried.

  “Do you think I should see someone else?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t make that decision for you, dear. I was under the impression that you liked Dr. Warren.”

  “You’re not going to quit on me, are you?” I posed.

  Julia sat up straighter in the bathtub. White sudsy bubbles clung to her collarbone and cleavage. “Quit on you?”

  I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. “It’s just … you know this thing with my brain isn’t going away, right? I’m never going to get better.”

  Julia leaned forward in the bathtub, and this time her features revealed her concern. “What’s wrong? Where is this coming from? Did Dr. Warren say something that upset you?”

  “Nothing that I didn’t already know.”

&nb
sp; I entered the bathroom and knelt on the hard tile beside her as though worshiping at her altar. I skimmed my fingers across the water’s surface. Flimsy bubbles collected on my fingertips.

  “I’m okay,” I decided. I flicked the soap off the tips of my fingers. “Just another day of playing Nancy Drew with the Cold Case Clowns.”

  “Careful,” Julia clucked. “That nickname might stick.”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  “What’s wrong, darling?” She touched a damp hand to the side of my face. “You seem more tortured than usual,” she tried lightly.

  “I’m sure I just have to give it a chance,” I reasoned to myself. “When I first got to Parris Island, I was scared shitless. But I ended up really liking being a Marine. I’m sure this is the same thing—growing pains and all that.”

  “You don’t talk about that time of your life much,” she observed.

  “I don’t?” I made a thoughtful noise. “It takes up so much room in my brain, I guess I never noticed.”

  I stood from the floor after my knees began to ache. Julia looked up after me.

  “Do you want to join me?” she proposed. “I think there’s just enough room if we get creative.”

  “Okay.”

  I gripped the side of the bathtub to hold myself steady and stepped inside. The water drenched my socks and the bottoms of my dress pants.

  “Cassidy. What are you—. Don’t. You can’t.”

  I ignored Julia’s protests and climbed into the bathtub, still fully clothed.

  She continued to sputter and protest as I made myself comfortable at the far end of the tub. The faucet dug into my back, but I didn’t care. I closed my eyes and let the warmth of the bathwater envelope me like a warm embrace. The scent of lilac filled my nostrils.

  “I do have an in-unit washing machine,” she remarked. “There’s better ways to clean your clothes.”

  “I got impatient,” I quipped.

  I sought out her solid thigh beneath the cover of translucent bubbles. I rested my hand on her knee, but kept my intentions innocent.

  Julia tilted her head back and sighed. “I don’t know if I want to be a public defender anymore.”